In the End, Just How Badly Did Things Go For Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga?

A few weeks go I devoted a couple of blog posts to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga--the disappointing debut of which should have come as no surprise to anyone who remembered how the last Mad Max movie actually did, as against the entertainment press' crowing over it as if it were a gargantuan blockbuster (Max Max: Fury Road making a pretty mediocre gross by big budget summer movie standards, and probably losing money in the process). And even if one was less than clear on all that the memory of how franchise movies about side characters from the franchise's main line generally do would have prepared them for how things actually went. (From the first Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga recalled Disney-Lucasfilm's Solo: A Star Wars Story, which proved a franchise-derailing flop--all as, let us be honest, Furiosa is no Han Solo pop cultural cachet-wise.)

Of course, even allowing for that one may have wondered if a weak opening might not be redeemed by good weekend-to-weekend holds--especially as fairly decent legs helped the Mad Max movie make what money it did (the movie picking up a not bad 3.4 times its domestic opening), and there may be a trend toward movie grosses being less front-loaded. Alas, far from bouncing back from a weak opening with a good run of that kind, the movie did less well than its predecessor that way (its pretty much ended run seeing it take in just 2.6 times what it did in its first three days). Meanwhile the international markets were no source of salvation--the domestic/international split in the global gross for this one pretty much the same as with Fury Road (a 39/61 domestic/international split in the take against 41/59 for the 2015 film). Accordingly the $105 million it has picked up internationally so far compares poorly with the last movie's $226 million back in 2015 (and nearly $300 million in today's terms). The result is a total of $173 million in the till--about a third what the original made in inflation-adjusted terms (its $380 million equal to some $500 million in 2024 dollars).

Am I surprised? Not really. After that opening I thought even $200-$250 million for this one optimistic, a figure I contrasted with the nearly $400 million I thought the movie might need to eventually break even. The result is that what I said in late May still stands:

the movie may have as good a shot at making Deadline's list of biggest box office flops come April 2025 as anything released so far this year--though it is also the case that this year is young, and many bigger movies seem likely to have receptions no better than this before New Year's Day.